About 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston sat back down with management and a federal mediator on Nov. 9, 2026 — the first bargaining session since October and the last scheduled chance to avoid a strike the Massachusetts Nurses Association says would be the largest open-ended registered-nurse walkout in state history.
The union filed the required 10-day strike notice on Nov. 1, setting an open-ended strike for 7 a.m. on Nov. 12 if no deal is reached, according to the MNA. Federal mediators have been involved in the talks since April, and Monday’s session was the first time the two sides had been back at the table since Mass General Brigham presented its most recent offer in October.
Brigham and Women’s is the flagship teaching hospital of Mass General Brigham, the largest private employer in Massachusetts, and its roughly 4,000 MNA-represented nurses make this one of the largest single-hospital nursing units in the state. A strike there would ripple well beyond one building: MGB has said it would bring in temporary nurses to keep units staffed, which is exactly the move that turned the union’s one-day strike in July into a much longer standoff.
How the hospital and the union got here
Brigham nurses voted 93% on Sept. 24 to authorize an open-ended strike. They had been set to walk out Oct. 14, but postponed that date after Mass General Brigham, the hospital’s parent system, presented what it called a “last, best, and final” contract offer four days beforehand. The MNA’s Brigham bargaining unit put that offer to a vote and rejected it on Oct. 23, which led directly to this month’s 10-day notice and the Nov. 12 strike date.
Not their first strike this year
Brigham nurses already struck once in 2026. Around 4,000 of them walked out for one day on July 8 — the first strike in the hospital’s history and, at the time, the largest nurse strike in Massachusetts history. Mass General Brigham then locked them out for four additional days, saying the roughly 1,300 replacement nurses it had hired to cover the walkout were contractually guaranteed a minimum of five days of work; the Brigham’s own nurses weren’t let back on the floor until July 13, according to CBS Boston. The union has said MGB has not meaningfully negotiated since.
What nurses are asking for
The MNA says Brigham nurses want cost-of-living raises, more affordable health insurance, limits on the hospital’s reliance on temporary travel nurses, and stronger contract language tying staffing levels to patient-care safety. The hospital says it has offered concessions, including on what nurses pay for health insurance, and maintains it can keep care safe during any work stoppage by bringing in experienced temporary nurses to join its existing teams.
Why this matters for nurses
An open-ended strike is a different animal than the one-day action Brigham nurses already tried this year — and so is the lockout that followed it. Hiring a wave of replacement nurses under multi-day minimum contracts is exactly how a one-day strike turns into a week without a paycheck for the nurses who walked. If this one actually starts Wednesday, every nurse watching from outside Massachusetts should understand what they’re watching: not just a pay fight, but a test of whether a hospital system answers an open-ended strike with an open-ended lockout of its own.